Year-End Tax Strategies for Charitable Giving

Making Charitable Donations Part Of Your Year-End Tax Strategy

Year-end tax planning often involves doing things to reduce your tax bill, and one easy way to get a tax break is to make gifts to charity.

Making a charitable donation is not only a chance to make a difference: it’s also an excellent way to reduce your tax burden for the year. With only a few days left until the new year, time is running out on getting those deductions for 2016.

Donations are tax deductible in the year they are made — by the end of Dec. 31 for 2016, for instance. If you put a contribution on a credit card by the end of the year and don’t pay the bill until 2017, it’s still deductible in 2016. The same goes for a check you write this year that is not cashed until next year.

The IRS offers the following additional reminder to help taxpayers plan their holiday and year-end gifts to charity:

“Check that the charity is eligible. Only donations to eligible organizations are tax-deductible. Select Check, a searchable online tool available on IRS.gov, lists most organizations that are eligible to receive deductible contributions. In addition, churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and government agencies are eligible to receive deductible donations.”

Mightycause regularly imports data directly for the IRS, so you can be sure that any certified charity on Mightycause is eligible for a tax-deduction. Razoo also hosts a ton of charitable fundraisers as well as nonprofit organizations that qualify and provides the necessary documentation for each donation; making it easy to make all of your year-end donations in one place.